When last we left our heroes

Carredyn files his report with Lt Laszlo. The Lieutenant is not exactly pleased with the damage to the platform. The next day, The Hat arrives with an intelligence briefing, and a report that Sgt.Duncan Kasper & Detective Padraic Phelan are laid up in medical after a fairly violent fight during their Iron Ring reconaissance. The Team splits up, with Francis, Glanthur, and Carredyn heading to interrogate the prisoners, and Vala & Maddox going to track down Fu-Lan “The Fist”.

The Great Gymnasium

Maddox & Vala do some information-gathering at The Great Gymnasium in The Guildhall Ward, and question some monks who have heard of Fu-Lan. It seems he teaches at a recreation center in The Hive. They head to a train platform to rendezvous withe the rest of SPU36, but are intercepted by The Hat in a steam-carriage on their way to the train platform. He informs them of an emergency, pulls them inside, and they speed off toward a kidnapping scene in the Market ward. There, they find out that a eight wealthy teenage girls have been kindapped, including Galatea Van Derek, Vala’s sister. The men doing the kidnapping seemed to be mercenaries or warriors of some kind – rough individuals wearing piecemeal armor, one of whom was a spellcaster. They seemed to be led a by a gentleman in a cloak and blue armor. Because of the political implications of this incident, They rush to The Barracks to meet with Laszlo.

It Goes Boom

Frances, Carredyn, and Glanthur question the captive Redcloak gang members at the Central District sub-station, and are met with terrified, stuttered answers. They don’t know what happened, they don’t remember attacking SPU36, etc. The young elves are obviously hiding something, when one finally blurts out that their leader, Seth Two-Blade, had made an arrangement with “Bonewrack”, at which point, his eyes roll up in his head, blood erupts from his nostrils, and he dies. The other 3 gangers are totally freaked out, and demand to be taken to a “safe” area before they will answer anymore questions, so the team relocates to The Barracks.

At the Barracks, Glanthur’s Detect Magic reveals devices in their brains, so he and Frances autopsy the dead ganger’s brain and find resin known as “Infernal Rose” – an ingredient they both recognize as being part of the “Shrieking Twist”. As Frances orders the area quarantined, Laslzo and The Hat burst in, trailed by Maddox & Vala: This kidnapping must be addressed immediately.

To The Pit

As the team + Laszlo + The Hat travel to The Hive in a steam carriage, it’s revealed that the girls in question were taken through a gate from the Market Ward to a location near the ditch – and, perhaps coincidentally, down the block from the rec. center where Fu-Lan supposedly teaches, on Radaghast street. Laszo coordiantes the recon of the neighborhood with The Hat & his intelligence team, while SPU36 approaches carefully, and Glanthur, solo, takes the lead and plugs one of his myriad devices into the ground, a Heuristic Seismograph. The device, something like a giant screw with a cubical crystla wired into the top, produces an echo-based layout of a series of underground chambers beneath the warehouse where the girls are known to have been taken. The team approaches carefully, and, checking every possible trap along the way. The descend in to the darkened pit below.

Night of a million, million ninjas.

In the first chamber, the team investigates the area, but there is not much to see, so Maddox begins to pick the lock on the only door in the room. After popping the second of three tumblers, a portal in the wall pops open, and countless ninja being spilling in to the room. SPU36 has just been ambushed by The Crimson Wrath, the City’s most notorious clan of death-dealing assassins. For the record, they’re known as the Poison Fist of the Guildhall Ward, and will kill you five times before you hit the ground. Led by the seen-at-the-scene-of-the-crime man in blue armor, the ninja begin their furious assault. …which is immediately rebuked by the spellcasting might of Vala and Glanthur, who decide to host a ninja barbecue. After exterminating countless (well, twelve) of the ninja, the Blue Knight shoves Carredyn across the room and signals a retreat. And as fast as the ninja poured in to the room, countless red-clad assassins disappear through the quickly-closing portal. Bewildered, the team enters the next chamber, as Maddox pops the lock, and they stop briefly to loot the lone posessions of the deceased ninja – 12 masterwork Ninja-to swords.

HFSWTFITT or: holy fucking shit, what the fuck is that thing!?

As the team looks around at the wall-crystal-lit reliefs carved into the walls, they notice several piles of bones on the floor as they walk through the moist stone chamber. Maddox begins working on the lock to the next door, when an 11-foot, black-skinned, four-armed, no-genitals-having, mutated Black Abashi (identified by the team as a “Dark Abashai”) rises out of the stone floor behind them, and, wielding a chain, attacks. Long story short, the creature is nearly indestructible, and has some manner of gem mounted in it’s chest. After a long, drawn-out combat in which nearly all group resources are expended, the creature falls, but the team is very low on spells, ammunition, and supplies.

Then we break, because it is late and people need to go do things. Like go to sleep.

Next Time:

Hopefully less ninjas and less mutant abishai.

Significantly less spell-casting, we might presume

Get to the bottom of the dungeon so Zac can tear down the map of The Pit that lives in his living room right now.

Updates

(presented at beginning of game)

The Military, composed of the forces which came to the city’s defense during the Great War, are known as the Esteemed. Originally under the jurisdiction of the Accordant, the oh-so-slow wheels of bureaucracy are turning, to the end that the Esteemed will be a completely separate Faction – eventually. There are many grey areas regarding command structure, but these growing pains have been surprisingly low key. For now, however, the Esteemed remain part of the Accordant, and all Police & Military operate out of the barracks. It’s believed that the Military will relocate – within the year – into the new Armory. Which, to no one’s surprise, has been constructed directly on the ruins of the old Armory.

Report from Intelligence via The Hat identifies the leader of the small scale Iron Ring operations in New City as a Lieutenant named Vance Vincent. He’s believed to be the right hand of the de facto head of Iron Ring operations in New City, known to be a ruthless man called Eryan Dream. At this time Intelligence has only names and visuals on these two men.

Investigations into Harcourt, the name obtained from the Barber in the last game, have been largely inconclusive. Two different leads have ended at the same point: Harcourt supposedly meets a man who is known as “The Fist” or Fu-Lan every Taker’s day – or once every two weeks. Fortunately for you, GS2 begins on Taker’s day.